Titanic Survivors' Letters, Clothes Sold at Auction

The last remaining survivor of the Titanic received over 50,000 dollars in an auction of items from the liner to raise money to pay her nursing home fees, auctioneers said Saturday.

Millvina Dean, 96, was forced to sell a 100-year-old suitcase filled with clothes which was donated to her family by the people of New York when they arrived in the United States after being rescued.

Rare prints of the liner signed by the artists along with compensation letters sent to her mother by the Titanic Relief Fund also went under the hammer in Devizes, southwest England.

The sale raised 31,150 pounds (40,000 euros, 53,900 dollars), ten times what Dean was hoping to raise, with the letter attracting the highest single bid of 11,100 pounds.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: "It is a great amount of money, I am sure she will be very happy when we tell her the news."

Aldridge said the Titanic International Society had bid for the items with the intention of returning them to their owner.

"Unfortunately they were blown out of the water by other bidders," he said.

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Dean was a two-month-old baby and her family were emigrating to Kansas when the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

She was placed in a sack and carried to safety. Her mother and brother also survived, but her father was among the 1,500 passengers and crew who died.

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Dean moved into a private nursing home in Ashurst, southern England, after breaking her hip two years ago.

Source-AFP
SRM